


End At The Beginning, Begin At The End

by JJ_Shinnick



Series: Music'Verse [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Prequel, Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 22:06:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJ_Shinnick/pseuds/JJ_Shinnick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick never meant to end the world, and he never meant to save it.  He's still not sure which they did.  Optional prologue to Hear No Evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End At The Beginning, Begin At The End

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a prologue for the Music'Verse. Unfortunately, it's the prologue for the novel I'm hoping these fragments won't turn into. Totally optional for your understanding of the rest; if you don't want to hear me make promises I might not keep as an author, skip on to the next part.

You don't mean to. You never meant to, and maybe that's enough for God to forgive you even if his children never will. You knew not what you did.

Fuck that. That's a lie. You didn't know at the beginning where it was all going to lead—but if you had you still wouldn't have been able to help yourself. You still would have taken that first hit, that first drink, that first kiss. You're not sure at this point that you want to be forgiven; you still aren't sure you did wrong. 

It started with the party your mother threw when you were eight and your brother was five. The two of you had snuck down after bedtime, down the stairs to the rec room in the basement. Your mother's friend had been playing the violin. You hadn't known it was illegal then. You didn't know it was wrong. You just knew it was the most beautiful thing you'd ever heard.

Or maybe it started later. The year you were in sixth grade and you'd had to do a report on the second Prohibition. The first one hadn't taken, hadn't been strong enough to save people from themselves. The people had fallen into wickedness and self-destruction, you were told, until the Department of Public Safety had been formed to lead America into a new age of enlightenment. You'd done the research that explained that music was _dangerous_ , that drugs and drink would kill you if they could. You'd given the report and repeated the facts you'd found. You didn't mention how you were allowed at your mother's parties now, how she would sing in her dark smoky voice and sometimes you would sing along so quietly. And you had never raised up your hand to ask _how_ something that beautiful could possibly hurt you. You didn't find that out until years later. Maybe that was where it started, when you didn't ask.

Or maybe it started the first time you picked up a guitar. You had to wear gloves for weeks to hide your raw red fingertips until it healed into smooth flat callus—and then you learned to keep your left hand in your pocket to hide _those_.

No. You're pretty sure it started the night _he_ stumbled into the club. So new. So deceptively innocent. He'd been the one to put it all together, to figure out how to block out the Static. Hell, he'd figured out what the Static _was_. You would never have met him without all the other things, but if you'd never met him you would have been taken by the Static or kept playing in shitty club bands. You wouldn't have been happy, not quite. You'd probably have OD'd on something sooner rather than later, and wound up another statistic for the Department of Public Safety.

Someone else would have started the war to save the world, and maybe it would have been worth it. Maybe a quiet death would have been better than the things you've seen, the things you've _done_. But once you'd started, whatever point you could have turned back, you didn't. You started, and by the time you knew where you would end up, it was much too late to stop.


End file.
